Let's not say that it's fun to talk about drowning children, but reading Scott Alexander reason his way through the philosophical experiment is fun. More Drowning Children.
TracingWoodgrains draws off a now-deleted essay by Jaibot which talks about the “Copenhagen interpretation of ethics”. It argues that by “touching” a situation - a vague term having something to do with causal entanglement - you gain moral obligation for it. If you can simply avoid touching it, your moral obligation goes away.
I think this explains half the problem, but I can think of another half that it doesn’t explain. Consider:
The problem is based on the The Drowning Child thought experiment of Peter Singer.
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It occurs to me that I have a new pattern of finding articles that look interesting or provoking, including a teaser quote, and making a short observation of my own about it. When I am back on the news (unless I follow CS Lewis and abandon it for good), I may go back to doing less of it. I also don't think I can go the next step to the Maggie's Farm form of linking to ten stories a day with almost no commentary. But it feels comfortable for now.
2 comments:
Speaking as a trained Swiftwater Rescue Technician, what we teach our rescuers about it is that they are under no obligation whatsoever to save a drowning person. You didn't put them in that situation, and it is supererogatory of you to risk your life to any degree to get them out of it. You can't help anyone else, either, if you get killed doing so -- and you might help many people if you protect yourself, and your comrades who are also trained rescuers who have the will to try to help others. Thus your very first ethical obligation is to keep yourself alive; your second, your comrades; and only at the third degree should you worry about helping the drowning, once you have done your best to assure the first two duties will be fulfilled.
Philosophically, I think this approach to the ethics makes very good sense. You must train emphatically and ruthlessly to be able to bring anyone back from the water. If you can't, or if they fight you and might drown you, you have to let them go. It's not your fault.
CERT training hits on many of the same themes- if you don’t keep yourself safe, you risk the larger effort and also increase likelihood someone else has to rescue you.
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